Storage software market sees 10.3% y-o-y growth

Strong growth in the fourth-quarter ensured that spending within the worldwide storage software market reached $12.7 billion in 2010, figures from the International Data Corporation (IDC) have revealed.

This represents the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year grow and saw the market expand by 10.3 per cent compared to 2009, the firm explained.

"The storage software market is in the midst of a sustained recovery, which is partly driven by new product innovations, and partly by a strong desire to address inefficiencies related to storing, protecting and managing corporate data," said Eric Sheppard, research director with IDC's Storage Software program.

He added that the growth had also been aided by an increase in storage software which has been designed to enable automated storage tiering.

IDC said that the storage infrastructure market saw the highest calendar year growth of 23.6 per cent, while data protection and recovery remained the largest functional market, with sales surpassing the $4.4 billion mark.